Presented by Adam Sandman, Inflectra's Technical Director, this is a talk on How to Help Testers and Developers Work Together in Harmony originally airing on March 31 at 2pm (EDT). This talk was first presented at Swiss Testing Day and DevOps Fusion 2019. Overview: One of the biggest challenges for test managers and project leadership is how to avoid the typical miscommunications between testers and developers. Despite best efforts, we often find that assumptions, team processes and even choice of language can create friction and frustration between developers and testers. This session will discuss the roots of the communication disconnects and provide practical strategies for enabling harmonious, productive teams, with examples taken from actual client situations. The session will include a discussion what 'done' and 'happy path' really means. Key Takeaways: 1. How a test manager can define processes that create a common understanding of the user stories for developers and testers 2. How you can establish a common set of criteria so that testers and developers can agree what 'done' means 3. Using visual aids to communicate what is being tested by unit tests, automated tests, exploratory tests, and manual tests, so that there are no surprises. Date: March 31, 2020 at 2PM (EDT) About the Speaker: Adam Sandman has been working in the IT industry for the past 20 years in areas such as architecture, agile development, testing and project management. Currently Adam is a Director of Technology at Inflectra Corporation, where he is interested in technology, business and enabling people to follow their passions. At Inflectra, Adam is responsible for researching the tools, technologies and processes in the software testing and quality assurance space.

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How to Help Testers and
Developers Work Together in
Harmony
Presented by
Adam Sandman
March 31, 2020

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About Me
 Adam Sandman was a programmer
from the age of 10 and has been
working in the IT industry for the past
20 years.
 Currently Adam is a Director of
Technology at Inflectra Corporation,
where he is interested in technology,
business and innovation.
 Adam lives in Washington, DC, USA

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Agenda
A Story that Had a Happy Ending
Tools for Fostering Harmony
 Communication
 Language
 Process
 Education
Wrap Up
Questions

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Takeaways
1. How a test manager can define processes that create a
common understanding of the user stories for developers
and testers
2. How you can establish a common set of criteria so that
testers and developers can agree what 'done' means
3. Using visual aids to communicate what is being tested by
unit tests, automated tests, exploratory tests, and manual
tests, so that there are no surprises.

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First, A Story
When Danny and Tina almost got into a fight
And we learned that we need to foster harmony

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How it began…
 We were in the middle of a Sprint developing our Help Desk
application – KronoDesk. Our developers were committing
code into Git, building with Jenkins, using NUnit for our unit
tests, and our testers were using Exploratory testing plus
some manual scripted tests:
Code Build
Unit
Tests
Exploratory
Tests

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What happened next…
“I just started testing and
the first thing I tried
broke…”
“I cannot believe that Danny
marked those bugs as
fixed…. Do you not test
your code before you
commit it?”
“Tina” – our tester

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Things got worse…
“Tina doesn’t understand how
the system works, I fixed
everything that was logged…”
“When I tested it on my
machine, everything worked
fine…”
“Danny” – our developer

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Happy Ending?
 We started this conversation
 Danny helped streamline the process so that Tina could
avoid manual setup time on some tests
 Tina helped Danny test on the staging environment after CI
deploy was completed so that they were looking at the
same thing
 Inspired me to write this presentation and share our ideas!

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How do we help testers and
developers work in
harmony?

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Communication
Clarify roles, better user stories, steps of doneness

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Testing = Manage Technical Risk

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The Manager’s Role
 Get rid of the “blame”
perception. Testers often feel
like a bug found in production
is their “fault”
 Testers and developers help
you as the manager understand
the risks of going live.
 Emphasize that the decision to
release is yours – buck stops
with you.

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Requirements and User Stories
 Teams should collaborate on requirements. Once written,
they need to be reviewed and updated by team.
* © Scott Adams, Dilbert - http://dilbert.com/strip/1994-09-22

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Steps of Doneness
 Make sure the entire team knows what “done” means. Does
it mean coded and committed only? Does it include unit
tests? Testing on dev or staging environments?
* © Scott Adams, Dilbert - http://dilbert.com/strip/2007-11-26

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Language
What we mean vs. what we say

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A Tester to Developer Dictionary
Developer Says:
• I have fixed the bugs you
logged and you can test
them in the next build
Developer Means:
• I fixed exactly what was
written in the bug, tested
exactly that case on my
workstation, and it “should”
probably work for some
other cases.
Recommendations:
• Make it easier for developers to test on same environment
• Developers document what was “fixed” and the limits of the fix

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A Tester to Developer Dictionary
Developer Says:
• I did some “light”
refactoring in this sprint
that should only have a few
side effects, and I have
tested those already
Developer Means:
• I complete rewrote 95% of
the application and every
page needs to be tested,
including those that I didn’t
intentionally change
Recommendations:
• Team consensus on refactoring goals

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A Tester to Developer Dictionary
Developer Says:
• I tested the email
notification functionality
and it should work fine.
Developer Means:
• I tested that the code to
send emails compiles and
the unit tests passed. I don’t
have it hooked up to mail
server, so you should test
that part.
Recommendations:
• Define clearly which environments to test on, and what is
the scope of the testing by developers

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A Tester to Developer Dictionary
Tester Says
• I tried to test the new ticket
details page and it crashed
the first time I tried, did
you even test this before
telling me it was ready?
Tester Means:
• I tested it using IE9 on a
slow internet connection
with a bunch of custom
fields added and logged in
as a low-permission user.
Recommendations:
• Define a testing strategy with team consensus, so that
everyone agrees on browsers, environments, users

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A Tester to Developer Dictionary
Tester Says
• Right now the application is
completely broken, nothing
works at all. I don’t know
why I bother even testing it.
Tester Means:
• I could get 80% through
every scenario, but none of
them worked end-to-end. I
wish I knew what areas we
already knew had bugs so
that I could focus elsewhere.
Recommendations:
• Define the correct metrics and make it easy for everyone to
know the true state of each part of the system being tested

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Process
Making your DevOps process foster team harmony

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A Sample DevOps/TestOps Process
Source Code Mgt.
Requirements, User
Stories, etc.
Subversion
Git Continuous
Integration
(Jenkins)
Automated
Tests (Checks) Test
Environments
Acceptance
Tests
Deployment
Process
Exploratory
Testing

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Hierarchy of Testing Risk
Happy Path, Safe Environment
Realistic Paths, Safe Environment
Edge Cases, Safe Environment
Edge Cases, All Environments
If it breaks here, then
no point trying further
levels in the hierarchy

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For Example:
Admin User, Firefox, Happy Path
Multiple Non-Admin Users, Chrome, Firefox, Happy Path
Multiple Non-Admin Users, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, All Paths
Multiple Non-Admin Users, Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, IE10/11, All Paths

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Define what should be tested and by whom?

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For Example…
Developer
1. Test using Admin user and
happy paths on local PC
using Firefox, then…
2. Testing using Admin user
and happy paths on
staging using
Firefox/Chrome
3. Developer ‘done’
Tester
1. Test using non-admin user
on staging using
Firefox/Chrome, then…
2. Test using non-admin user
on staging using
Firefox/Chrome/IE/Edge/
Safari
3. Tester ‘done’

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Education
Understanding architecture and what is being tested

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Testing = Manage Technical Risk

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All The Automated Tests
Pass
Should We Ship?

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User Stories
Requirements
Automated Testing
Testing: Navigating Edges

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Testing: Navigating Edges
The Actual System

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Testing: Navigating Edges & Eliminate Risk
The Actual System
Edge Cases

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Architecture
How Testers & Developers See the System

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Architecture Affects Perspectives
User Interface
Business Logic
Screen A Screen B Screen C
Component 1 Component 2 Component 3
Component 4 Component 5 Component 6
Unit Tests
• All unit tests pass,
but Screens A,B,C
don’t work

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Architecture Affects Perspectives
User Interface
Business Logic
Screen A Screen B Screen C
Component 1 Component 2 Component 3
Component 4 Component 5 Component 6
• A developer fixes
Component 1,3,4,5
• Error resides in
Component 2
• Tester tests Screen A, and
it is still broken
• Developer changes
Component 2, which breaks
screen C and Component 3
• Tester doesn’t understand
why Screen C suddenly no
longer works

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Wrap Up
 Developers and Testers are vested in the success of the
project, but conflict arises due to miscommunication and
processes that don’t understand the different perspectives
 Managers need to ensure that they assume the business risk
of releasing, informed by the results of the testing
 Developers and testers often have different views of what is
meant by ‘done’, and in fact they are often testing different
things in different ways.
 Education of what is being tested by each part of the
process is critical to a common understanding

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Questions?

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